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Author Guidelines

Language Editing

Hindawi has partnered with Editage to provide an English-language editing service to authors prior to submission. Authors that wish to use this service will receive a 10% discount on all editing services provided by Editage. To find out more information or get a quote, please click here.

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript through the online
Manuscript Tracking System. Only electronic PDF (.pdf) or Word (.doc, .docx, .rtf) files can be submitted through the MTS, and there is no page limit. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be accepted. The submitting author takes responsibility for the manuscript during submission and peer review. If for some technical reason submission through the MTS is not possible, the author can contact ijo@hindawi.com for support.

Terms of Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are only being considered by this journal. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is also the submitting author’s responsibility to ensure that the article has all necessary institutional approvals. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the author(s) before publication, unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition of submission that the authors permit editing of the manuscript for readability. All inquiries concerning the publication of accepted manuscripts should be addressed to ijo@hindawi.com. All submissions are bound by the Hindawi terms of service.

Peer Review

All manuscripts are subject to peer review and are expected to meet the standards of academic excellence. If approved by the editor, submissions will be considered by peer reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors.

Our Research Integrity team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to: recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Concurrent Submissions

In order to ensure sufficient diversity within the authorship of the journal, authors will be limited to having two manuscripts under review at any point in time. If an author already has two manuscripts under review in the journal, they will need to wait until the review process of at least one of these manuscripts is complete before submitting another manuscript for consideration. This policy does not apply to Editorials or other non-peer reviewed manuscript types.

Article Processing Charges

The journal is Open Access. Article Processing Charges (APCs) allow the publisher to make articles immediately available online to anyone to read and reuse upon publication. For more details, please visit the Article Processing Charges information page.

Units of Measurement

Units of measurement should be presented simply and concisely using the International System of Units (SI).

Preprints

Hindawi supports the deposition of manuscripts in preprint servers, and does not consider this to compromise the novelty of the results. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered. The preprint should be cited.

Article Types

The journal will consider the following article types:

Research Articles

Research articles should present the results of an original research study. These manuscripts should describe how the research project was conducted and provide a thorough analysis of the results of the project. Systematic reviews may be submitted as research articles.

Reviews

A review article provides an overview of the published literature in a particular subject area.

Formatting

An optional research article manuscript template can be downloaded here. We recommend that all manuscripts follow the structure below:

Title and Authorship Information

The following information should be included:

Manuscript title

Full author names

Full institutional mailing addresses

Email addresses

Abstract

The manuscript should contain an abstract. The abstract should be self-contained, citation-free, and should not exceed 300 words.

Introduction

This section should be succinct, with no subheadings.

Materials and Methods

The methods section should provide enough detail for others to be able to replicate the study. If you have more than one method, use subsections with relevant headings, e.g. different models, in vitro and in vivo studies, statistics, materials and reagents, etc.

Hindawi journals have no space restriction on methods. Detailed descriptions of the methods (including protocols or project descriptions) and algorithms may also be uploaded as supplementary information or a previous publication that gives more details may be cited. If the method from a previous article is used then this article must be cited and discussed. If wording is reused from a published article then this must be noted, e.g. This study uses the method of Smith et al. and the methods description partly reproduces their wording [1].

If a method or tool is introduced in the study, including software, questionnaires, and scales, the license this is available under and any requirement for permission for use should be stated. If an existing method or tool is used in the research, the authors are responsible for checking the license and obtaining any necessary permission. If permission was required, a statement confirming permission was granted should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

Publishing Protocols. We encourage authors describing any methodology, in particular laboratory-based experiments in the life sciences but also computational and bioinformatics protocols, to upload details of their methods to protocols.io. This is an Open Access website that allows researchers to record their methods in a structured way, obtain a DOI to allow easy citation of the protocol, collaborate with selected colleagues, share their protocol privately for journal peer review, and choose to make it publicly available. Once published, the protocol can be updated and cited in other articles.

You can make your protocol public before publication of your article if you choose, which will not harm the peer-review process of your article and may allow you to get comments about your methods to adapt or improve them before you submit your article (see also the protocols.io FAQ page).

Results and Discussion

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Main Text (Review only)

This section may be divided into subsections or may be combined.

Conclusions

This should clearly explain the main conclusions of the article, highlighting its importance and relevance.

Data Availability (excluding Review articles)

This statement should describe how readers can access the data supporting the conclusions of the study and clearly outline the reasons why unavailable data cannot be released. For guidance on composing a Data Availability statement, including template examples, please see here.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must declare all relevant interests that could be perceived as conflicting. Authors should explain why each interest may represent a conflict. If no conflicts exist, the authors should state this. Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests.

Funding Statement

Authors must state how the research and publication of their article was funded, by naming financially supporting body(s) (written out in full) followed by associated grant number(s) in square brackets (if applicable), for example: “This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the National Science Foundation [grant number zzzz]; and a Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grant”.

If the research did not receive specific funding, but was performed as part of the employment of the authors, please name this employer. If the funder was involved in the manuscript writing, editing, approval, or decision to publish, please declare this.

Acknowledgments

All acknowledgments (if any) should be included at the very end of the manuscript before the references. Anyone who made a contribution to the research or manuscript, but who is not a listed author, should be acknowledged (with their permission).

References

Authors may submit their references in any style. If accepted, these will be reformatted in Chicago style by Hindawi. Authors are responsible for ensuring that the information in each reference is complete and accurate. All references should be numbered consecutively in the order of their first citation. Citations of references in the text should be identified using numbers in square brackets e.g., “as discussed by Smith [9]”; “as discussed elsewhere [9, 10]”. All references should be cited within the text and uncited references will be removed.

Preparation of Figures

Upon submission of an article, authors should include all figures and tables in the PDF file of the manuscript. Figures and tables should not be submitted in separate files. If the article is accepted, authors will be asked to provide the source files of the figures. Each figure should be supplied in a separate electronic file. All figures should be cited in the manuscript in a consecutive order. Figures should be supplied in either vector art formats (Illustrator, EPS, WMF, FreeHand, CorelDraw, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) or bitmap formats (Photoshop, TIFF, GIF, JPEG, etc.). Bitmap images should be of 300 dpi resolution at least unless the resolution is intentionally set to a lower level for scientific reasons. If a bitmap image has labels, the image and labels should be embedded in separate layers.

Preparation of Tables

Tables should be cited consecutively in the text. Every table must have a descriptive title and if numerical measurements are given, the units should be included in the column heading. Vertical rules should not be used.

Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials are the additional parts to a manuscript, such as audio files, video clips, or datasets that might be of interest to readers. Authors can submit one file of supplementary material along with their manuscript through the Manuscript Tracking System. If there is more than one file, they can be uploaded as a .ZIP file.

A section titled “Supplementary Material” should be included before the references list with a concise description for each supplementary material file. Supplementary materials are not modified by our production team. Authors are responsible for providing the final supplementary materials files that will be published along with the article.

Proofs

Corrected proofs must be returned to the publisher within two to three days of receipt. The publisher will do everything possible to ensure prompt publication.

Copyright and Permissions

Authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts, and all Open Access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations. The submitting author is responsible for securing any permissions needed for the reuse of copyrighted materials included in the manuscript.

While the advice and information in this journal are believed to be true and accurate on the date of its going to press, neither the authors, the editors, nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also known as ‘competing interests’) occur when issues outside research could be reasonably perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment. For more information, see our publication ethics policy. Authors must declare all potential interests – whether or not they actually had an influence – in a ‘Conflicts of Interest’ section, which should explain why the interest may be a conflict. If there are none, the authors should state “The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this article.” Submitting authors are responsible for coauthors declaring their interests. Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.

Authors must declare current or recent funding (including for Article Processing Charges) and other payments, goods or services that might influence the work. All funding, whether a conflict or not, must be declared in the “Funding Statement”. The involvement of anyone other than the authors who 1) has an interest in the outcome of the work; 2) is affiliated to an organization with such an interest; or 3) was employed or paid by a funder, in the commissioning, conception, planning, design, conduct, or analysis of the work, the preparation or editing of the manuscript, or the decision to publish must be declared.

Appeals

Authors may appeal if they feel that the decision to reject was based on: i) a major misunderstanding over a technical aspect of the manuscript, or ii) a failure understand the scientific advance shown by the manuscript. Appeals requesting a second opinion without sufficient justification will not be considered. To lodge an appeal, please contact the journal by email, quoting your manuscript number. Appeals will only be considered from the original submitting author.